How love can always – except in one instance, work
By zevi770 · February 29, 2012
Love is the ultimate power
It can transform death to life
All of this world is built due to God’s love for us
Similarly, research shows, that there is really only one psychological mechanism that heals people and that is love
Empathy, compassion, are all sophisticated words for love
You see psychologists say we need love more than we need food, and that is a strong need
When a person doesn’t feel loved, they feel lost, and when they feel loved they feel whole again
But there is one or two instances where love will not work and that is when the other person is jealous of you
You see jealousy stems from arrogance (for the humble – those with low self images or better yet, not inflated self images (often actually as a result of bad self esteem)) are jealous over what others have, especially their happiness.
This is clearly seen in antisemitism, whereas Jews till this very day only have love in their hearts for all people, the antisemites only desire to murder Jews.
Now if love, as all emotions should act as a mirror, channeling a reciprocal feeling into the recipients hearts, why wouldn’t it work with the jealous out of arrogance.
The answer is because our sages teach us – hatred messes up reality.
Though the reality of life is that people feel reciprocal emotions, this doesn’t work if a person is in the state of fear/hatred.
So love can only be reciprocated if a. the person is not arrogant (hence doesn’t disassociate from all of the emotions you put out, as they are on a different plane so it would be like shooting a beam of love/light that goes “under them” and doesn’t even reach them) and b. if they don’t hate you – which often stems from jealousy.
The punch line is, that Jews should never try to get their enemies to love them, for their enemies are psychologically in a bad space and hence are incapable of receiving the goodness and love they are giving to them.